The Hack Amendment

Let's Archive Garbage

Super-Malware to the Rescue?

This thing may need its own cape.
This new malware is being called Equation and has targeted over 450 computers in more than 25 different countries. The targets include diplomatic institutions, scholars, Islamic activists, telecommunications companies,internet providers, the military, aerospace, transportation, financial, mass media, nanotechnology industries and more. As you can see these are not easy targets so somebody knows what they're doing.

It was recently announced that the most sophisticated malware ever found was discovered. The discovery was made by Kaspersky Lab and they announced that this bug uses a tactic to infect hard drives that has never been seen before. The malware attacks the firmware directly as opposed to storing itself simply on the drive. While this is very interesting it also makes traditional anti-malware and antivirus software useless. Most of the attacks to been seen on Windows PCs, although in China Mac OS X was also hit. Although to a much less degree it would appear that IOS is vulnerable to this particular type of attack as well.

Tripwire magazine released that they believe whoever is using this new type of malware is choosing their targets very carefully despite best isp practices. This can be seen by the sophistication of the malware itself as well as the difficulty in discovering it on the given targets. Tripwire also suggested that this malware could be turned against the United States or Europe, assuming the attacks are not coming from there.

This new malware is being called Equation and has targeted over 450 users in more than 25 different countries. The targets include diplomatic institutions, scholars, Islamic activists, telecommunications companies, the military, aerospace, transportation, financial, mass media, nanotechnology industries and more. As you can see these are not easy targets so somebody knows what they're doing.

In fact Equation directly attacked some of the initial victims of the Stuxnet worm that was most certainly created by the US national security agency. This does seem to raise some questions as to whether or not this new form of attack is also a product the NSA. Kaspersky Lab released that it has no proof that the NSA is the origin of this new malware but they do see a close connection between previous government attacks and this one.

President Obama described cyber security breaches as acts of property damaging commercial theft and has long been a proponent of establishing international protocols to manage and govern any cyber-attacks that are state-sponsored. The idea that the NSA created this new malware greatly decreases the veracity of the president and his previous claim as well as raises concerns that the government may be using it to spy on its own citizens. This is a new idea and honestly given the current environment very few citizens would be shocked or surprised that their computer was filled up with malware that was sponsored by the United States.

Terrorism is always a concern, and cyber terrorism is growing fast. It is clear that the United States needs to have tools available to it to not only protect from these attacks but also seek out and neutralize potential terrorist activity. It's just very difficult sleep well knowing that these invisible tools could very well be pointed inward at the very people that the NSA is claiming to protect. Essentially this new malware is a threat to everyone, and every computer connected to the Internet. The same can be said of traditional weapons such as atomic bombs but the likelihood of the government bombing itself with a nuclear weapon is considerably less than it is to plant highly sophisticated and invasive malware onto a citizen’s computer under the pretense of tracking terrorist.

More News

Feb 21 2015Google mad at government again.
Google's director of information security and law enforcement said that the proposed amendment would likely be used to search computers, devices, and satellite internet providers all around the world and the company last week filed many comments on this issue.